Labor, Indigenous Peoples, and the Amazon Rubber Campaign during World War II

During World War II, U.S. officials scurried to increase rubber output from the Amazon after losing access to traditional Southeast Asian supplies. Among the many challenges that U.S. officials faced was mobilizing a labor to tap rubber under inhospitable and exploitative conditions. This paper, exploring U.S. and Brazilian debates regarding the adequacy of discrete populations for tapping rubber, focuses on the debates and challenges of mobilizing indigenous population for the wartime campaign.